LGBTQ Studies

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LGBTQ Studies

The LGBTQ Studies program posits sex and sexuality as central analytical categories within many different fields of inquiry. This emerging discipline scrutinizes the cultural production, dissemination, and vicissitudes of sexuality while attempting to decipher the meanings inscribed in the practices and discourses of sex. We may say that LGBTQ Studies does for sex and sexuality what women's studies does for gender. It has grown out of women's and gender studies, cultural studies, and the post-1969 discourse on the politics of sexuality both in the public sphere and the more limited arena of scholarly endeavor.

A minor in LGBTQ Studies​ will enable you to devote significant study to the experiences of people who do not conform to culturally dominant identities of sexuality and gender: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer. Such an endeavor is profoundly interdisciplinary by nature and draws on university resources and faculty expertise in a wide array of disciplines. In this minor, you will have the opportunity to analyze the experiences of LGBTQ people on their own terms, as well as through critical perspectives on sexuality and gender as complex social, cultural, biological, and historical phenomena.